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The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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Disassembling the hybridity of networked activism – Emiliano Treré, Cardiff University

A talk on the hybrid nature of networked activism

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In this talk, I chart and explore the hybrid nature of networked activism. More specifically, drawing on the findings of my recent monograph Hybrid Media Activism (Routledge, 2019), I illustrate five media hybridities of contemporary protest movements. I commence showing how activists operate traversing the physical and the digital, and reflect on the materiality, plasticity and spatiality of social movements’ practices. Then, I tackle the meshing of the human and the non-human dimensions, disentangling the mutual shaping of algorithms and social movements.Third, I shed light on how movements incessantly blend old and new media, including older digital technologies, such as online forums and emails, but also more traditional media, such as radios and televisions. Fourth, I focus on the interplay between the internal and external communication practices of activists, foregrounding the intricacies of contemporary collective action and the usefulness of an ecological gaze to grasp media complexity. Finally, I scrutinize the blending of the corporate and the alternative, arguing that it is now imperative to examine the consequences of the materiality of activism in the context of the increasing corporatisation of digital environments, and the resulting negotiations and tactics of activists in their everyday struggle against data capitalism.

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